Very Bad People, A Review

Revenge is a Dangerous Game.

SPOILER WARNING READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I Killed Zoe Spanos Review.

Very Bad People follows Calliope Bolan, a young girl who moves away from home to attend The Tipton Academy after spending most of her childhood in a tiny town where everybody knew everyone’s business. Calliope is also feeling a somewhat recent family tragedy after her Mother was killed in a drowning incident when she drove straight into a lake with her three daughters still in the backseat. Despite excessive police investigation there has never been any official closure on Kathleen’s death and the general consensus is suicide.

Kathleen however had her own connections to Tipton and after Calliope is pegged to join the very same secret society her Mother was once part of she begins to realise that there is more to the story than she’d initially thought. Now officially a ‘ghost’ and part of the Haunt and Rail society, Calliope has access to past secrets and records. Digging a little deeper into the past Calliope hopes to finally close the lid on the Bolan family tragedy, but will she like what she finds?

After absolutely loving I Killed Zoe Spanos last year I was so excited to return to Frick’s writing and dive right into this one. I will say straight off the bat that I did have some issues with the storyline here (which I will discuss below) but I still really enjoyed the overall vibe and academic location. I’m always a sucker for a good boarding school/college based thriller (Where Sleeping Girls Lie, The It Girl) and The Tipton Academy was brilliantly used. The multiple locations explored, day to day class life and of the course the secret society were all really fun and despite some of my issues I definitely still enjoyed the environment here.

I hate to say this but the Haunt and Rail as a secret society were kind of… lame? The ghosts were built up to be this mysterious group that had been active in the college for years and years but when we actually got to see them operate they basically acted like a student council? The group’s ‘top secret missions’ basically consisted of campaigning for better student/staff rights and whilst this is obviously important it’s hardly something you have to meet up in secret to do. The group seemed to take themselves so seriously, meeting up at night and sending coded messages but when you actually got down to it they were a glorified student council at most, it was a little bit silly.

The main mystery here was also a bit of a let down and lacked a lot of the promise and intrigue that I thought it would. Again, don’t get me wrong it was an interesting storyline and I liked following Calliope as she investigated her Mother’s death but so many of the clues along the way turned out to be complete red herrings and the supposed evil society had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. It might just be because I overestimated things here but I was fully expecting a conspiracy with The Haunt and Rail and Kathleen’s murder but the two ended up being completely separate and so much of the build up felt like it was all for nothing? What’s more we only got into the actual murdery parts of the story in the last 50 pages and then that was left completely open ended as well, I was really expecting something else here.

Overall this book wasn’t what I was expecting at all and it might just be on me for overestimating the storyline but for me this book was not in. The main mystery of Kathleen’s murder seemed to fly under the radar, the so called secret society just felt a little too tame and even when we did get into the darker stuff it all left on a massive cliffhanger. I really loved I Killed Zoe Spanos last year but I’m afraid this book wasn’t at the same level for me and I was definitely expecting something else entirely.